Web Design, Development and Search Engine Optimization

Humanscale Ergonomics

2008-10-09T12:56:00.001-04:00

Building Websites that are Findable

2008-06-11T09:59:00.000-04:00

I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking about this. Every web designer should have this topic in mind before starting any actual development. This is a prerequisite that all should adhere to.

More to come...

Clean Your DNS Cache to Fix Browsing Problems

2008-01-14T08:44:00.000-05:00

If you've found yourself hitting DNS errors or 404 pages in your browser but you know your net connection is working fine, it might be time to flush and restart Windows' DNS cache.

The How-To Geek shows how to do this in three command line entries, although you might only need the first to see results.

After launching a command prompt as an administrator and closing down Firefox (which has its own DNS cache), enter the following:

ipconfig /flushdns
net stop dnscache
net start dnscache

source: lifehacker.com

Steal This Wi-Fi

2008-01-10T12:58:00.000-05:00

Steal This Wi-Fi

Bruce Schneier 01.10.08 12:00 AM

Whenever I talk or write about my own security setup, the one thing that surprises people -- and attracts the most criticism -- is the fact that I run an open wireless network at home. There's no password. There's no encryption. Anyone with wireless capability who can see my network can use it to access the internet.

To me, it's basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea. But to some observers, it's both wrong and dangerous.

I'm told that uninvited strangers may sit in their cars in front of my house, and use my network to send spam, eavesdrop on my passwords, and upload and download everything from pirated movies to child pornography. As a result, I risk all sorts of bad things happening to me, from seeing my IP address blacklisted to having the police crash through my door.

While this is technically true, I don't think it's much of a risk. I can count five open wireless networks in coffee shops within a mile of my house, and any potential spammer is far more likely to sit in a warm room with a cup of coffee and a scone than in a cold car outside my house.

And yes, if someone did commit a crime using my network the police might visit, but what better defense is there than the fact that I have an open wireless network? If I enabled wireless security on my network and someone hacked it, I would have a far harder time proving my innocence.

This is not to say that the new wireless security protocol, WPA, isn't very good. It is. But there are going to be security flaws in it; there always are.

I spoke to several lawyers about this, and in their lawyerly way they outlined several other risks with leaving your network open.

While none thought you could be successfully prosecuted just because someone else used your network to commit a crime, any investigation could be time-consuming and expensive. You might have your computer equipment seized, and if you have any contraband of your own on your machine, it could be a delicate situation. Also, prosecutors aren't always the most technically savvy bunch, and you might end up being charged despite your innocence. The lawyers I spoke with say most defense attorneys will advise you to reach a plea agreement rather than risk going to trial on child-pornography charges.

In a less far-fetched scenario, the Recording Industry Association of America is known to sue copyright infringers based on nothing more than an IP address. The accused's chance of winning is higher than in a criminal case, because in civil litigation the burden of proof is lower. And again, lawyers argue that even if you win it's not worth the risk or expense, and that you should settle and pay a few thousand dollars.

I remain unconvinced of this threat, though. The RIAA has conducted about 26,000 lawsuits, and there are more than 15 million music downloaders. Mark Mulligan of Jupiter Research said it best: "If you're a file sharer, you know that the likelihood of you being caught is very similar to that of being hit by an asteroid."

I'm also unmoved by those who say I'm putting my own data at risk, because hackers might park in front of my house, log on to my open network and eavesdrop on my internet traffic or break into my computers. This is true, but my computers are much more at risk when I use them on wireless networks in airports, coffee shops and other public places. If I configure my computer to be secure regardless of the network it's on, then it simply doesn't matter. And if my computer isn't secure on a public network, securing my own network isn't going to reduce my risk very much.

Yes, computer security is hard. But if your computers leave your house, you have to solve it anyway. And any solution will apply to your desktop machines as well.
Finally, critics say someone might steal bandwidth from me. Despite isolated court rulings that this is illegal, my feeling is that they're welcome to it. I really don't mind if neighbors use my wireless network when they need it, and I've heard several stories of people who have been rescued from connectivity emergencies by open wireless networks in the neighborhood.
Similarly, I appreciate an open network when I am otherwise without bandwidth. If someone were using my network to the point that it affected my own traffic or if some neighbor kid was dinking around, I might want to do something about it; but as long as we're all polite, why should this concern me? Pay it forward, I say.

Certainly this does concern ISPs. Running an open wireless network will often violate your terms of service. But despite the occasional cease-and-desist letter and providers getting pissy at people who exceed some secret bandwidth limit, this isn't a big risk either. The worst that will happen to you is that you'll have to find a new ISP.

A company called Fon has an interesting approach to this problem. Fon wireless access points have two wireless networks: a secure one for you, and an open one for everyone else. You can configure your open network in either "Bill" or "Linus" mode: In the former, people pay you to use your network, and you have to pay to use any other Fon wireless network. In Linus mode, anyone can use your network, and you can use any other Fon wireless network for free. It's a really clever idea.

Security is always a trade-off. I know people who rarely lock their front door, who drive in the rain (and, while using a cellphone) and who talk to strangers. In my opinion, securing my wireless network isn't worth it. And I appreciate everyone else who keeps an open wireless network, including all the coffee shops, bars and libraries I have visited in the past, the Dayton International Airport where I started writing this and the Four Points Sheraton where I finished. You all make the world a better place.
---
Bruce Schneier is CTO of BT Counterpane and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly About Security in an Uncertain World. You can read more of his writings on his website.

source: wired.com

How Much Time You Can Record on a DVD?

2007-12-31T16:04:00.000-05:00

How Much Time You Can Record on a DVD?

A very common question I receive from owners of DVD recorders and persons considering a DVD recorder purchase is: "How much time can I record on a DVD?" This answer to this question for each DVD recorder is explained in both the published specifications (which are available online) and the user manual for that DVD recorder.

However, for those that are still in the purchasing consideration stage, here is an overview of the recording times available on a standard 4.7 GB blank DVD and how these recording times are labeled. These times are for single layer, single sided discs. For double-layer, or double sided discs, multiply each time by two:

XP - 1 Hour
SP - 2 Hours
LP - 4 Hours
EP - 6 Hours
SLP - 8 Hours
SEP - 10 Hours

In addition, some DVD recorders also feature HSP (1.5 hours), LSP (2.5 hours), and ESP (3 hours).

Also, keep in mind, just as with VCR recordings, the less recording time you use to fill the disc the better the quality and compatibility with playback on other DVD players.

XP, HSP, SP are the most compatible and provide what is considered standard DVD quality (depending on the quality of the source material)
LSP and LP would be the next best choice - which should still be compatible with playback on most DVD players at fair quality - you may experience some minor stalls or skips.

The remaining record modes should be avoided, if possible, as the video compression needed to place this much time on a disc will cause many more digital artifacts and will affect play compatibility on other DVD players - Also, the video quality would be very poor - about the same or worse than the VHS EP/SLP modes.

From Robert Silva,Your Guide to Home Theater.

Is youtube profitable?

2007-12-26T12:50:00.000-05:00

Mark Glaser asks. My answer: It doesn't matter. What matters is that Google owns the most important distribution network for video on the planet. The rest will follow.

UAE blocking flickr!!!

2007-12-26T11:23:00.000-05:00

USB Battery

2007-05-30T11:51:00.000-04:00

Batteries have reduced many a grown person to tears. Whether they're in your flashlight, Speak N Spell, laptop, or MP3 player, they always seem to be dead when you need them most. We can debate the pros and cons of other technological advances, but when it comes to batteries, everyone is in agreement that it's time for a better mousetrap.
A few new technologies, most available today, are worth looking at.

A USB/Battery Combo: The USBCELL battery can be recharged when you yank off its head to reveal a USB plug. Recharge the battery from your laptop or any other powered USB port. Snap the head back on and you're good to go. (About $19 for two batteries.)

No Pre-charging Required: Hybro, a new rechargeable battery from Uniross, is—unlike most rechargeable batteries—ready to use right out of the package without charging it first. The manufacturer claims it'll last four times as long as a standard rechargeable battery. It'll retain its charge for months and is rechargeable up to 500 times. Two AA batteries are $13.

Windows Vista Using All Memory

2007-04-13T16:25:00.000-04:00

Check this out: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000688.html

Web Design, Development and Search Engine Optimization: Can't We All Just Get Along?

2007-02-05T12:23:00.000-05:00

Web Design, Development and Search Engine Optimization: Can't We All Just Get Along?

Can't We All Just Get Along?

2007-02-05T12:15:00.000-05:00

Can't We All Just Get Along? Apparently Google, Microsoft and Yahoo Can!Announced at PubCon in Las Vegas, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have agreed to come together and accept a standard protocol for submitting web pages to their crawlers via site maps. Google was the first to develop a site maps program where one could submit a feed to the Google index and not only ensure their pages are crawled but identify any potential problems. Now MSN and Yahoo follow suit. A new site (Sitemaps.org) has been launched that will contain more information on the subject.

From the Official Yahoo Blog: "By offering an open standard for web sites, webmasters can use a single format to create a catalog of their site URLs and to notify changes to the major search engines. This should make is easier for web sites to provide search engines with content and metadata."

From the Official MSN Blog: "So, why are we excited to work on this? Because by agreeing on a standard, we can provide site owners with one simple way to share information with every search engine. You just publish a sitemap, and every engine is instantly able to read and use the data to more effectively index your site. Since this is a free, widely supported protocol, our hope is that this will foster an even broader community of developers building support for it."
And then a comment from the Official Google Blog: "If any website owners, tool writers, or webserver developers haven't gotten around to implementing Sitemaps yet, thinking this was just a crazy Google experiment, we hope this joint announcement shows that the industry is heading in this direction."

Danny Sullivan who has been pushing search engines to accept common standards for some time now had the following to say, "Overall, I'm thrilled. It took nearly a decade for the search engines to go from unifying around standards for blocking spidering and making page description to agreeing on the nofollow attribute for links in January 2005. A wait of nearly two years for the next unified move is a long time, but far less than 10 and progress that's very welcomed. I applaud the three search engines for all coming together and look forward to more to come."
Most webmasters will never have any need to use the Sitemaps protocol mostly because their sites are small and easy to crawl. However many large e-commence sites and informational sites have already been using Google Sitemaps, not only to ensure all their hard to find content is indexed but to identify potential problems with pages. Now they will be able to do the same with MSN and Yahoo.

Other search engines are invited to accept the protocol which leads me to wonder when Ask will step up to the plate. Although I love the Ask search engine, it is more difficult to get all your content indexed as well as making sure what they do have indexed is fresh and up to date. That may have something to do with the fact that their intention is not to have the biggest index but rather the most reliable search results (at least it was states as such as SES 2005 in San Jose). Still it would nice if sites that are currently indexed could ensure that content is fresh and current rather than stale and out of date.

What's next in cooperating together? All the engines have recently adopted a standard for a "nofollow attribute" for links and then a standard for opting out of having Open Directory information appear in the organic search results. Possibly the next project will be adopting a common practice for using the robots.txt system of blocking pages? We'll just have to wit and see.

SEO Is Not Rocket Science, It's Like Baking a Cake

2007-02-05T12:12:00.000-05:00

SEO Is Not Rocket Science, It's Like Baking a Cake

At least that is what Dave Pasternack of Did-it.com is saying. Yes he has stuck his foot in his mouth once again. Are you tired yet of hearing from this guy? I know I am. In this latest DM News article, he answers a series of questions, one of which he compares SEO to baking a cake. Sound foolish? Wait, there's more.

First the cake example:

The Question: Last week, Danny Sullivan went on record with the statement that "SEO is rocket science." Would you care to comment on this?

Dave's Answer: To be fair, Danny Sullivan said that anything is rocket science if you don’t understand it. Well I don’t know how to bake a cake, but I wouldn’t call such a task "rocket science." If I really wanted to bake one, I’d buy a cookbook (the Google guidelines) and bake away. Can you imagine bake shops trying to convince everybody that baking a cake is so complicated that it shouldn’t be left to mere mortals? Ridiculous. I wonder what percentage of Danny’s show attendees are there to find the "magic SEO elixir." I would guess a very high percentage. I suppose we all have to cater to our audience.
Please, SEO compared to baking a cake? If only it was that easy. Now, certainly I wouldn't compare SEO to the technology behind developing rockets that project objects into outer space but even a child can bake a cake. I don't see many children doing SEO effectively. In fact the majority of people I talk to that are somehow involved with the marketing and/or management of a web site do not know SEO. I suppose that is why there is such a large industry of companies that are providing this as a service, an industry that is continually growing and doing quite well.

How about this one:

The Question: You warn that marketers are growing increasingly wary about "pushing the SEO envelope." As you point out, contracting with a shady SEO company can result in severe penalties and brand damage. What advice would you give marketers that might help them select an ethical firm?

Dave's Answer: Reputation. Reputation. Reputation. And then I would do a Google search for the term "search engine optimization" and run away from any company which can’t even get themselves into the top five organic results. Doctor, heal thyself! And don’t believe for a second that these firms are not trying to get themselves to this coveted position. If they did, they’d win every sale. Maybe I would even hire them.
An amusing statement to say the least. Especially from a company that offers paid search marketing services but they themselves cannot be found in "the top five organic results" for phrases related to their business - PPC management, pay per click management, PPC services, pay per click services, paid search marketing, etc. In fact, I don't even see them in the top 5 paid results at Google for these terms.

And finally, this statement:
Dave Says: SEM and SEO are totally different worlds. In PPC SEM, a marketer is always limited to the strategies and tactics that are supported by the bid technology platform they are using.
Really? Actually now that the major PPC providers are looking more closely at the quality of landing pages, I see PPC becoming a lot more like SEO. Besides that, what about the marketing element? Does PPC management simply rely on automated bidding software as Dave makes reference to or r is there more to it? Actually there is a lot more. How about keyword research? How about marketing objectives? How about common sense? Shall I go? While automated bidding software can help, PPC still needs the human element.

The more Dave chooses to defend himself from his original sin article, the deeper the hole he digs for himself. Can we now expect Kevin Lee to come in behind and help dig Dave out once again?

Windows Vista Useful Stuff

2007-02-05T11:46:00.000-05:00

Are you ready for Windows Vista?
Make sure your Windows XP-based PC is ready to run Windows Vista. Download and run the Windows Vista Upgrade Advisor.
Try out cool applications
Want to see the envelope-pushing ways software companies are building products for Windows Vista? Drop into the Innovation Café to interact with examples of the kinds of software you'll be using in the years ahead.
Enjoy photos and video like never before
See how Windows Vista puts your pictures and home movies all in one place—along with the tools to perfect, organize, and share them.
Get free spyware protection
Download Windows Defender for Windows XP and help protect your computer against spyware.

Wasting Link Authority on Ineffective Internal Link Structure

2007-02-05T11:34:00.000-05:00

Wasting Link Authority on Ineffective Internal Link Structure

If you put one form of internal navigation in parallel with another you are essentially telling search engines that both paths and both subset pages are of the same significance. Many websites likely lose 20% or more of their potential traffic due to sloppy information architecture that does not consider search engines.
Many people believe that having more pages is always better, but ever since Google got more aggressive with duplicate content filters and started using minimum PageRank thresholds to set index inclusion priorities that couldn't be further from the truth. Shoemoney increased his Google search traffic 1400% this past month by PREVENTING some of his pages from being indexed.
Some types of filtering are good for humans while being wasteful for search engines. For example, some people may like to sort through products by price levels or look at different sizes and colors, but pages that are almost duplicate with the exception of price point, size, model number, or item color may create near duplicate content that search engines do not want to index.
If you are wasting link equity getting low value noisy pages indexed then your high value pages will not rank as well as they could because you wasted link equity getting low value pages indexed. In some cases getting many noisy navigational pages indexed could put your site on a reduced crawling status (shallow crawl or less frequent crawl) that may preclude some of your higher value long tail brand specific pages from getting indexed.
More commonly searches that have some sort of filter associated with them will be associated specific brands rather than how we sort through those brands via price-points. Plus the ads for those terms tend to be more expensive as well.
The reasons brands exist is that they are points of differentiation that allow us to charge non commodity prices for commodities. That associated profit margin and marketing driven demand is why there is typically so much more money in branded terms than other non-brand related filters.
When designing your site's internal link structure make sure that you are not placing noisy low value pages and paths in parallel or above higher value paths and pages.

AMD plans new generation of graphics chips - Financial Times - MSNBC.com

2006-10-26T12:18:00.000-04:00

AMD plans new generation of graphics chips - Financial Times - MSNBC.com: "AMD plans new generation of graphics chips
Financial Times

• Subscribe to FT.com
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• Data and tools
• Comment and analysis

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By Chris Nuttall in San Francisco

Updated: 12:10 a.m. ET Oct 26, 2006
Advanced Micro Devices on Wednesday completed its $5.4bn acquisition of graphics chip maker ATI Technologies of Canada and said it would produce 'Fusion' – a new kind of"

Windows XP Commands

2006-10-20T07:06:00.000-04:00

Windows XP Commands: "An A-Z Index of the Windows NT/XP command line
ADDUSERS Add or list users to/from a CSV file
ARP Address Resolution Protocol
ASSOC Change file extension associations
ASSOCIAT One step file association
AT Schedule a command to run at a later time
ATTRIB Change file attributes

BOOTCFG Edit Windows boot settings
BROWSTAT Get domain, browser and PDC info

CACLS Change file permissions
CALL Call one batch program from another
CD Change Directory - move to a specific Folder
CHANGE Change Terminal Server Session properties
CHKDSK Check Disk - check and repair disk problems
CHKNTFS Check the NTFS file system
CHOICE Accept keyboard input to a batch file
CIPHER Encrypt or Decrypt files/folders
CleanMgr Automated cleanup of Temp files, recycle bin
CLEARMEM Clear memory leaks
CLIP Copy STDIN to the Windows clipboard.
CLS Clear the screen
CLUSTER Windows Clustering
CMD Start a new CMD shell
COLOR Change colours of the CMD window
COMP Compare the contents of two files or sets of files
COMPACT Compress files or folders on an NTFS partition
COMPRESS Compress individual files on an NTFS partition
CON2PRT Connect or disconnect a Printer
CONVERT Convert a FAT drive to NTFS.
COPY Copy one or more files to another location
CSVDE Import or Export Active Directory data

DATE Display or set the date
Dcomcnfg DCOM Configuration Utility
DEFRAG Defragment hard drive
DEL Delete one or more files
DELPROF Delete NT user profiles
DELTREE Delete a folder and all subfolders
DevCon Device Manager Command Line Utility
DIR Display a list of files and folders
DIRUSE Display disk usage
DISKCOMP Compare the contents of two floppy di"

Controlling Page Margins with External CSS

2006-10-19T09:12:00.000-04:00

Controlling Page Margins with External CSS: "Controlling Page Margins with External CSS
What are page margins and why would you want to use them? You have seen them before but may have not realized it. Some web pages have a margin (space around the edges of the browser window). Web pages that do not have a page margin, will display the page content and graphics flush with the browser window. Each method has a purpose and creates a different effect. Try using different page margin values with your web site and see which you prefer.

The HTML code for page margins is shown below, BUT if you want to make your page margin changes in just one file so you can change it site wide rather than on each individual HTML page, did you know that you can do this using external CSS?

HTML method (add code the BODY tag of your web page source code):

CSS method (add code to the BODY tag of your external style sheet):

body {margin-top: 10px;
margin-right: 10px;
margin-bottom: 10px;
margin-left: 10px;}

To reduce your margins to zero (all page content is displayed flush with the browser window) simply change the values to zero or zero pixels.

In the example code above, all page margins are set to 10."

New version of Firefox available for download

2006-10-17T13:07:00.000-04:00

New version of Firefox available for download
New version of Firefox available for download: "New version of Firefox available for downloadRelease Candidate 3 is finalized; work starts on Firefox 3.0Todd Weiss Today’s Top Stories or Other Storage StoriesPreparing Your Data Center for the Future: Building an Adaptive Data Center InfrastructureThe Rise of iSCSI: IP Storage Makes Big Waves in Enterprise ITDave Dully: The New Reality for the Application of Information Technology in Health CareEnhancing SQL Protection: A Case for Asynchronous ReplicationThe Hitachi Virtual Tape Library with a 'Wow' FactorVirtualizing Servers and Storage Across the EnterpriseStorage: Looking ForwardThe New Storage ParadigmStorage StrategiesOctober 16, 2006 (Computerworld) -- The latest release candidate for the Firefox Web browser is posted for free download.For the Mozilla Foundation and the Firefox community, the posting of Release Candidate 3 (RC3) is a huge milestone because it represents the final code for the long-awaited Firefox 2.0 browser.'If there are no showstoppers, RC3 will be it' and will become the final version of the Firefox 2.0 release, said Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering for the open-source Mozilla Foundation.The first release candidate for Firefox 2.0 was available Sept. 26, while the second was released Oct. 6 as developers sought additional input and bug reports from users.And even as Firefox 2.0 approaches its debut, work is already under way on the next full version of Firefox 3.0.To help create Firefox 3.0, the development team assembled a Firefox Feature Brainstorming Web page on the Firefox community wiki last wee"

Web Design Websites Development

2006-10-16T12:42:00.000-04:00

Web Design Websites Development

Attracting Customers to your Website via SEO (search engine optimization)

2006-10-16T11:47:00.000-04:00

Attracting Customers to your Website via SEO (search engine optimization): "What SEO Means To Your Online Business

Ammon Johns
Internet Marketing Consultant
Web Marketing Plus
What is SEO?
Searching is the second most commonly performed activity of all Internet users - right behind using e-mail. The majority of Internet users use search engines and web directories as their primary method to find information or resources on-line.
However, with approximately 4 billion web pages publicly available on the World Wide Web, and growing competition in every sector of the provision of data and services, the raw chances are that these people will find other sites than yours for the vast majority of even such searches as relate to your products.
Search Engine Optimisation uses knowledge and observation of exactly 'how' search engines and web directories decide which web sites to return as results for queries, and applies this to attain significantly higher placement for particular (proprietary) documents and sites. SEO is the process of assisting the search engines and directories to accurately evaluate which search queries your web content can answer effectively, and additionally seeks to place a certain 'bias' in your favour for ranking your sites within the search results for those queries.
How important is SEO?
In recent studies, top e-commerce and information web sites were discovered to receive up to 85 percent of all of their visitors (and customers) from search referrals. Without doubt, for the vast majority of on-line companies, SEO provides the highest possible ROI of all marketing and promotional activities.
More than 80 percent of Web users find the sites they're looking for by using a search engine, according to both Forrester Research and Georgia Tech's GVU Center User Surveys. Every single day, 57 p"

Google News - Sci/Tech

2006-10-16T11:45:00.000-04:00

Google News - Sci/Tech

Microsoft shows off Vista features / Next OS promised by early next year after many delays

2006-10-16T11:43:00.000-04:00

Microsoft shows off Vista features / Next OS promised by early next year after many delays